Monday, May 06, 2002

I agree with Ann Marlowe that the tradition of expecting men to pay for the woman's dinner is not harmless. "As long as we construe gender as being about the flow of funds from men to women, in some deep but inescapable way all women are prostitutes, and all men are johns." A female friend of mine had extremely high expectations for the first date: the man should pick her up, select a good restaurant, pay for dinner, and then arrange and pay for some evening entertainment (at least a movie). Although she was gorgeous and devastatingly intelligent and did not have a shortage of men willing to go through this selection process, she did not meet the kind of men she deserved, and I've always thought her date requirements had something to do with it.